The problem

THE past decade witnessed much turbulence in India China relations. Rising uncertainty and mistrust regarding the other side led to tension and acrimony. For India, China’s move to raise its political and economic footprint in the subcontinent was seen as a strategic threat in the neighbourhood. For China, India’s signalling of a deeper military strategic engagement with China’s main rivals – the US and Japan – was seen as a growing challenge to China.

Convinced that only a negative strategy would work, between 2015 and 2017, both sides furiously began developing leverages and pressure points to keep the other side off balance. India tilted closer to the US; China towards Pakistan. Yet, neither was able to extract any concessions or better terms in their bilateral interactions. On a range of issues – the NSG membership, Pakistan-linked terror networks, hydrological cooperation, among others, India failed to receive any cooperation from China. On its flagship international initiative – the Belt and Road Initiative – China too found itself confronting the only major holdout state and more generally as China’s most suspicious neighbour in Asia.

This experience of escalating competition and rising costs to Indian and Chinese interests – with the 2017 Doklam crisis on the Himalayan frontiers as the turning point – has persuaded both the Indian and Chinese leaderships that their policies were producing ‘lose-lose’ outcomes and required some kind of an adjustment.

In February 2018, India’s foreign secretary told the Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs, ‘India has to find and define for itself a relationship with China which allows us to maintain our foreign policy objectives and at the same time allows us a policy that is prudent enough that does not lead us to conflict on every occasion… it is not in the fundamental interest of the Government of India and I presume it is not in the fundamental interest of the Government of China to have a conflict of any kind of any sort and on any issue.’¹ This, in essence, was the backdrop to the April 2018 ‘informal summit’ in Wuhan, where both political leaderships sought to arrest the deterioration in the relationship.

While their differences and disputes remain unresolved, both sides have come to recognize the costs of a semi-hostile and contentious relationship. They have revived the previous equilibrium where contradictions, complexities, and differences can be handled in an overall political framework of a stable relationship. This basic approach of peaceful competition should be extended to the foreseeable future.

The importance of India China relations in India’s overall foreign policy today cannot be overstated. Not only is China’s rise changing Asia’s geopolitical landscape, and, to only a slightly lesser extent, the global balance of power, its involvement in Southern Asia in recent years has extended its previous position as India’s largest neighbour to one of an engaged great power across the subcontinent. Unlike in the Cold War era, when a backward China had been confined to a limited role in the region’s security and economy, four decades of reform and opening up to the world has provided China with the financial wealth, industrial strength, and military capacities to pursue a more ambitious role in South Asia, should it choose to do so.

India’s China policy is, thus, a profoundly consequential process for New Delhi, and it entails opportunities as well as risks with implications across a gamut of issues: to India’s global status and effectiveness in international institutions, geopolitical security, and economic transformation. The persistence of an unresolved border dispute in this context only reinforces the importance of crafting a sensible and effective China policy. What should be the key features of such a policy?

For one, India should aim to responsibly compete with its largest neighbour in the subcontinent, albeit asymmetrically but effectively. This should not preclude creatively leveraging China’s economic power to transform the region, a pragmatic strategy that other South Asian states have begun pursuing to their advantage. Policymakers should also recognize the wider ramifications of China’s rise in world politics and remain acutely sensitive to when and to what extent India’s other strategic partners respond to and support Indian interests and concerns. The creativity lies in leveraging geopolitical opportunities where they exist, without succumbing to a ‘ganging up’ game that leaves India vulnerable to pressure from China, while India’s friends, who have their own deep stakes with China, look on. It is a fine balancing act, and historically Indian strategists have got it more right than wrong.

A healthy competition and search for a geopolitical equilibrium must not, however, negate the possibilities to cooperate constructively on issues where common interests are evident such as on India’s economic-industrial transformation and order building in the international system. Or as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic illustrates, cooperating on human security and safeguarding their people from common bio-threats. The mantra for the political leadership should be to manage and cultivate this complex relationship rather than fall prey to binary choices that stifle India’s own rise.

Finally, a China-obsessed public discourse for India’s foreign policy has often distracted and led policymakers astray from the bigger picture and central geopolitical and developmental tasks before India. Many in India’s strategic community have announced that China is the number one challenge for India and advocated a geo-strategy and foreign policy built around China. This is a reactive approach. It is also an utterly narrow perspective.

India’s China policy should be guided by three grand strategic goals: an inclusive security architecture in Asia that facilitates a non-violent transition to multipolarity without disrupting economic interdependence; an open and reformed international order to better reflect the developmental interests of India and the Global South; and, geopolitical stability and sustainable economic development in the subcontinent. And because China is important to the successful pursuit of each of these strategic goals, the challenge before Indian policymakers is to envisage and execute a policy framework that allows for progress on these three ends. China policy, therefore, must be part of a bigger foreign policy and world order vision for India, not the other way around.

The future of India China relations are far from preordained. There are forces that are bringing both countries to craft a constructive and pragmatic relationship. There are also forces that are bringing friction and differences to the fore as India and China reclaim their place in a new world. Yet, this complex relationship can and must be built on an overarching vision that Asia’s rejuvenation is predicated on a stable and mature India China relationship. Any other choice would be to condemn history to repeat itself.

ZORAWAR DAULET SINGH

 

Footnote:

1. Ministry of External Affairs, ‘Sino-India Relations Including Doklam, Border Situation and Cooperation in International Organizations’, Sixteenth Lok Sabha, 4 September 2018, pp. 2-3.